


The Bright Lights of Disturbia: Chapters 38 and 39, Abridged

by leonidaslion



Series: Disturbia [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:51:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all of our scars are worn on the outside ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 38

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamlittleyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamlittleyo/gifts).



> THIS CHAPTER MAY DISTURB SOME READERS. For those of you worried about the content, I have posted this abridged version. I summarize the rest of the chapter here, so you won't miss any information. :)

The cabin belongs to Bobby, and like everything else the man owns that isn’t a gun, it’s worn down and falling apart. Right now, though, after twelve hours in the car with Dad sleeping off the drugs in the back seat and Dean silently gunning the gas beside him, it’s probably the most beautiful thing Sam’s ever seen. The way Dean just sits behind the wheel after he’s put the car in park and turned the engine off, blinking owlishly into the darkness around them, he’s just as ready to crash. Sam isn’t sure how his brother managed to get them this far—adrenaline and sheer willpower, probably.

“Dean?” he calls softly. Speaking sets off the ache in his face again, but Sam’s had time to get used to the pain and he ignores it in favor of watching his brother. Dean doesn’t appear to have heard him, still staring at the cabin without moving. “Dean,” Sam tries again, slightly louder.

This time Dean gives himself a little shake and looks over. Although his eyes rest on Sam’s bruised and battered face, Sam isn’t sure that his brother is actually looking at him. The pupils of Dean’s eyes are too wide, black pushing out all but a thin rim of green in the gathering dark. And there’s no spark of recognition there: no comprehension.

“You okay, man?” Sam asks, resting a hand on his brother’s arm.

Dean rallies a little at the contact, but instead of answering he opens his door and gets out of the car. Sam hurries to follow.

“Get inside,” Dean says as he goes around to the backseat to get Dad out. “Salt all the doors and windows. I’ll take care of Dad.”

Sam wants to argue—wants to ask who’s going to take care of _Dean_. Dean, who hasn’t said a single word the entire drive. Dean, who looks hollow and haunted as he leans into the car to wake their father. Dean, who—and this is the part that Sam’s really stuck on—just killed a man in order to save Sam’s life.

There was a demon riding the guy, and the demon is what Dean was aiming at, but it isn’t possible to kill one without killing the other, and that has to be messing with Dean’s head in ways Sam can’t even imagine. Especially coming so quick on the heels of their confrontation with Meg.

Dean has to be as terrified of that part of himself as Sam is, because Dean—this Dean, the Dean who is Sam’s brother—isn’t a killer. He’s too kind, too compassionate. Hell, even in Hibbing, back when the Benders had grabbed him and tortured him, he was more concerned with the girl’s well-being than his own.

It was Sam’s fault that Dean got grabbed then, and it’s his fault Dean finally pulled the trigger today. Some of the darkness Sam first saw at Bobby’s is loose now—it’s been let out of the box and isn’t going back in. Not now that Dean has taken that irrevocable step.

Sam looks at his brother, and he can see that darkness coiling through his soul. He can see the guilt, too, and the self-hatred and doubt, and he doesn’t know how to help. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say to ease Dean’s pain.

In the end, he takes the coward’s way out and obeys the order, going around to the trunk and getting out a fresh canister of salt and two of the bags. One bag—bulkier and heavier—has the weapons in it, the other is one of their overnights—Sam’s or Dean’s, it doesn’t make much of a difference which. Either way, there’ll be some medical supplies and fresh clothing inside—and once they’re safely within the cabin’s walls, Sam doesn’t want to have to come back outside until the sun is high and bright in the sky and they can see what they're up against.

The low murmur of Dean and Dad’s voices comes to him as he heads up the steps and into the cabin, sending the front porch’s normal denizens—beetles and other low, crawling things—scampering in fear at his footfalls. Dean has Dad out of the car by the time Sam has the front door open—just give it a couple of kicks, Bobby told him over the phone.

As he steps inside and flicks the light on, Sam can hear their hollow footsteps on the wooden boards behind him. He holds the door open for them while scanning the room for signs of danger, but there’s nothing alarming. A table, couple of chairs. Dusty, moth-eaten curtains on the windows.

Dad’s still leaning on Dean when they move past Sam and deeper into the cabin, but he looks steadier on his feet than he did back in Jefferson City, so hopefully the drugs are wearing off. Dean moves them forward with familiar confidence, not bothering to glance for the switch before flicking the light on in the next room.

He must have been here before, when Sam was away at Stanford. Or maybe the visit happened before that, on one of the jobs Sam ducked out on during those last, tumultuous years.

As he shuts the front door behind him and pours a line of salt across it, Sam tries to imagine that younger Dean sitting in one of the wooden chairs with his legs kicked up on the table, taking a swig from his beer and grinning as Bobby and Dad trade ribald jokes. He manages the image for a moment and then it fades into another: nameless stranger on the street, face expressionless, burnt hole in his temple and blood spreading out around his head in a sticky, red halo.

Who was he? Did he have a wife? Kids? A brother?

The demon said something while it was beating Sam’s face into a pulp, but Sam couldn’t concentrate on the words then, and he can’t recall them now. There probably wasn’t a clue to its host’s identity there anyway. Meg didn’t ever mention her host, after all—and why would she, why would any demon? Humans aren’t anything more than suits to them, to be pulled on or shucked off at a moment’s notice.

But that nameless man was more than a suit to Sam, and he knows that he was more than a suit to his brother as well. Or he will be, once Dean disengages enough from soldier mode to really feel the impact of what he’s done.

A hand brushes Sam’s shoulder and he jerks around, thudding into the wall. The canister of salt comes up in his hands, like a shield, although Sam knows that it isn’t any more than a flimsy defense. Then he sees who it is, and relief washes through him, cold and tingling.

“Jesus, Dean!” he breathes, lowering the canister again.

Dean’s expression doesn’t warm as he drops his hand, but the slight flicker of his eyes tells Sam that a part of his brother is amused by his response. “Sorry. I need the bags.”

Dean nods toward Sam’s left side, where the bags are hanging, and Sam obediently lets the straps slide down off his shoulder. Catching the straps in his hand before the bags can actually hit the floor, he offers them to his brother. Dean nods his thanks, taking the bags and carrying them over to the table.

Sam watches as his brother opens the first bag, peers inside, and then pushes it away. Weapons bag, then. The second bag turns out by luck to be Dean’s—Sam can tell from the speed with which his brother finds what he wants inside, pulling out the first aid kit. The faded black t-shirt and pair of jeans that join the kit on the table a moment later confirm the bag’s ownership—black isn’t really Sam’s color.

“You changing?” he checks. It doesn’t feel exactly right—much as he would love to get out of his clothes himself _(there’s blood on his shirt from his nose, or maybe his split lip)_ it isn’t a priority right now. And Dean’s usually even less concerned about that sort of thing than he is.

Sure enough, Dean shakes his head. “For Dad,” he says simply, gathering up the clothes and the first aid kit and hurrying out of the room.

Sam guesses that it makes sense. After all, Dad’s still wearing the same clothes he disappeared in two days ago—now stained with blood and sweat and God knows what else. A shower’s in order, most likely, and Dad’s going to want something clean to put on afterwards.

Returning to his assigned task, Sam moves around the cabin in a circle, outlining the entrance to each room with a thick line of salt to keep the demons out. Salting the bathroom is tricky—it’s already cramped enough in there with Dad sitting on the edge of the tub and Dean crouched in close between his knees. Dad has his shirt off as Dean checks out his chest, and the sunset of bruises makes Sam's face feel a hell of a lot better in comparison. But Dad isn’t wincing too badly as Dean carefully presses against his ribs, which hopefully means that nothing’s broken.

Sam isn’t surprised that Dean ignores him—Dean’s focus when one of them is hurt is always so intense it’s almost frightening—but even Dad takes a couple of moments to look up from Dean and ask, “Need something, Sammy?”

If Sam didn’t know better, he’d think Dad was angry with him for interrupting.

But they’re all tired and on edge, and after a momentary pause, Sam pushes the uncomfortable feeling away and holds the canister out over Dean’s head. “Can you get the window behind you?” he asks.

“Sure.”

Dad puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder as he takes the canister, making Dean pause in his assessment and sit back on his heels, and then twists around to lay a line along the shallow sill. He grimaces a little as he passes it back, and Dean shoots a hand up, closing it around their father’s waist to steady him. Dad shifts his grip from Dean’s shoulder to his wrist, and once again Sam gets that odd, uneasy flutter in his stomach.

There isn’t anything wrong with the touch—it’s a warning to take it easy, to ease up on his grip—but ... something about the curl of Dad’s fingers around Dean’s wrist just looks wrong.

 _I checked,_ Sam reminds himself. _I doused him in holy water and he hasn’t been out of my sight since. He’s fine._

He realizes he’s still standing there, reluctant to leave, only when Dean twists around to look up at him.

“I’ve got this, Sam,” he says pointedly.

“I’ll be fine,” Dad adds, releasing Dean’s wrist and putting his hands down on the tub. He nods to the door behind Sam. “Finish up. We’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”

Dad’s voice is easy enough, but the expression on his face is wary, as though Sam’s the one they need to be worried about. After a moment, Sam realizes that Dad probably _is_ worried about him. After all, he’s the ticking time bomb of a psychic here. He’s the weak link: the one they need to worry about hurting Dean.

Flushing at the reminder, Sam ducks his head and backs out of the room. As an afterthought, and to prove to himself that he isn’t as paranoid and jealous as he was feeling for a second there, he shuts the door behind him, giving Dean a little more room to work.

Less than two minutes later, Sam’s back in the main room finishing up the last window. He hears the door open and then shut again, and then his brother’s familiar tread on the floorboards. Glancing over his shoulder, he sees Dean strolling into the room while wiping his hands on a small towel. He probably got blood on them while he was cleaning Dad up.

“How is he?” Sam asks, turning back to the window.

“He just needs a little rest is all,” Dean answers.

Which is Winchester for ‘he’s beat all to hell, but it isn’t so bad it’ll slow him down’, and could mean anything from superficial damage to bruised ribs. But Sam is certain now that nothing’s broken, at least: Dean wouldn’t be so nonchalant if that were the case.

After a beat of silence, Dean adds, “How’re you?” and Sam floods with relief. He realizes he’s been waiting for that question, which is usually his brother’s first, and knows before turns around again that Dean is finally coming out of the driving, duty-bound fog he’s been lost in since Jefferson City.

Pausing for a moment, he takes stock of his own condition. His face aches all over, bone deep, and he can tell from his narrowed field of vision that the skin around his right eye is a little swollen, but he’s pretty sure Dean stopped the demon before it could do any real damage.

“I’ll survive,” he answers simply as he turns around to look at his brother.

Dean is sitting on the edge of the table with his head bowed and that white cloth in his hands. The soldier in him isn’t gone, exactly, but Sam thinks his brother has given himself the ‘at ease’ command. For the most part, Sam is relieved to see Dean sitting there instead of the methodical, detached hunter. But if Dean is letting himself be Dean again, then it’s only a matter of time before all of those emotions Sam caught a glimpse of out by the car swell to disabling intensity.

In an attempt to distract his brother before that can happen, he says, “Hey, you don’t think we were followed here, do you?”

Dean stirs a little, and actually looks over at Sam when he answers, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, we couldn’t have found a more out-of-the-way place to hole up.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. He wonders how Bobby found this place, what he used it for. There were perfumes in the bedroom, covered in dust and cobwebs. A jeweled comb. Woman’s things.

When Sam pulls his mind off of Bobby’s mysterious past, Dean’s eyes have gone distant on him. Sam’s sure that his brother is replaying the event in his mind, watching himself pull the trigger over and over. He considers trying to distract Dean again and then discards the idea. Nothing short of a full on assault on the cabin is going to stop Dean from thinking about Jefferson City.

But if Sam can’t stop his brother from thinking about it, then maybe he can at least change the _way_ that he’s thinking about it.

“Hey, uh, Dean, you—you saved my life back there.”

Dean blinks, eyes focusing on Sam. After a moment, he smiles wanly. “So, I guess you’re glad I brought the gun, huh?”

Sam had forgotten about their argument over the weapon, but as he replays it in his head now he’s surprised that he ever believed Dean’s grudging, sullen agreement. He must have been more preoccupied with Dad than he thought at the time.

Smiling a little to show his brother that he doesn’t have any lingering resentment or anger over the broken promise, he says, “Man, I’m trying to thank you here.”

Dean ducks his head, clearly embarrassed by the sentimentality of the gesture, and mumbles, “You’re welcome.”

It ends the conversation pretty soundly, and while Sam wracks his brain for something else to say, he heads over to the table and sets the salt canister down. This close to Dean, his hands itch to touch—to reassure. It’s probably the worst thing he could do right now, for a lot of reasons—not the least of which is the fact that Dad could rejoin them at any moment—and so he keeps going instead, crossing to the window on the other side of the room and peering out into the darkness.

“Hey, Sam?” Dean says softly from behind him.

“Yeah?”

“You know that guy I shot? There was a person in there.”

Sam’s chest clenches as he turns around. His brother isn’t looking at him. He’s staring down at his hands, like the gun’s there instead of tucked safely down the back of Dean’s jeans.

“You didn’t have a choice, Dean,” he says.

To his surprise, Dean nods. “Yeah, I know. That’s not what bothers me.”

Sam isn’t quite sure how to respond to that, or even if he’s reading Dean’s answer correctly. Because if he understands his brother, then Dean just said that he doesn’t care he killed a man. And that ... that possibility is more disturbing than Sam wants to admit.

He isn’t sure he wants to know—no, scratch that, he knows he’d rather remain in the dark on this one—but he clears his throat and manages to ask, “Then what does?”

“Killing that guy, killing Meg,” Dean answers slowly. “I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t even flinch.” He shakes his head a little, staring down with lost, damned eyes as he confesses, “For you or Dad, the things I’m willing to do or kill, it’s just, uh. It scares me sometimes.”

It scares Sam too. God, it leaves him fucking petrified, how easily Dean slipped into the darkness at Bobby’s. How quickly he must have found his way back there in Jefferson City when Sam needed him. He doesn’t know how far away that place is for Dean anymore, now that he’s found his way there once.

Sam wishes he could be sure that he was just looking at Dean now, that the darkness has been buried again, but he isn’t sure. He isn’t sure Dean’s ever going to be able to lock that part of himself away again.

That’s Sam’s fault, he knows. It’s his fault, and Dad’s, because Dean let the darkness in for them. It’s terrifying how easily Dean finds it to destroy himself when it comes to his family. It’s getting to be more than just a habit for him—more than an addiction. Like Dean doesn’t know how to breathe without twisting himself into what he thinks they need, no matter how much it hurts him, or how deeply he bleeds.

Worse, Sam and Dad keep on taking, like it’s their right, like Dean is theirs to own. Like it’s okay for Dean to be doing this for them. Sam knows it’s wrong, he does, but he just ... he doesn’t know how to tell his brother ‘no’.

He’s still searching for something to say—something aside from the ‘I’m sorry’ that’s only going to confuse Dean—when their father steps into the room.

Dad hasn’t changed, despite the fresh clothes Dean brought back for him, and Sam finds the sight of the soiled clothing disturbing. Dean’s clothes must not have fit, despite the fact that the two men are more or less the same size. No way Dad would have chosen to put those back on otherwise.

“It shouldn’t,” Dad says, his eyes fastened on Dean. “You did good.”

Dean lifts his head, and Sam can see his brother taking stock of their father’s appearance as well. But Dean has more important things to worry about than finding Dad a new outfit, and the cringing hope that fills his eyes as he looks up is painfully pitiful.

“You’re not mad?” he asks, voice trembling slightly.

“For what?”

“Using a bullet.”

“Mad?” Dad repeats the word as though he isn’t quite sure what it means—or maybe can’t connect it to Dean—and then, giving his head a little shake, answers, “I’m proud of you. You know, Sam and I, we can get pretty obsessed.”

He shifts his eyes to Sam, giving him a fond look and inviting him in. Sam doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this kind of approval and acceptance from Dad, and it makes him stand a little straighter now: eases the tightness in his chest and the lump in his throat.

Dad’s smile widens as he returns his gaze to Dean. “But you, you watch out for this family. You always have.”

Sam isn’t sure what’s going through his brother’s head right now, but Dean’s eyes are wet as he looks up at their father. The expression on his face is practically rapturous, and Sam realizes that, as gentle as Dad has been with Dean over the past four months, this is the first time that the man has said what they’ve always known. It’s the first time that he’s admitted out loud how very important and cherished Dean is to him.

This is the first time he’s told Dean that he’s proud of him.

In this moment, if Dad asked Dean to eat a bullet, he would. He’d do it in a heartbeat, without even asking why, and smile the whole time.

That understanding sours the taste of unity in Sam’s mouth, and he feels a distant sting of his old anger. Dad should have done this a long time ago. It shouldn’t have taken his eldest son turning into a murderer to get the man to unbend and offer the reassurance Dean has always craved.

“Thanks,” Dean says, looking up at their father with that adoring expression he still hasn’t offered Sam, even after all this time. Sam isn’t sure he actually wants Dean to look at him like that, as though he’s more myth than man, but seeing the expression leveled at Dad is making his stomach twist around itself with jealousy.

He’s about to move forward and break the moment when the lights flicker. Outside, the wind picks up, becoming a howl. The skin at the back of Sam’s neck prickles as he whirls to look out the window. The sound of footsteps on the floorboards and the stir of air at his back tell him that Dean has joined him.

Behind them, Dad says, “It found us. It’s here.”

“The demon?” Sam asks. There’s nothing outside—nothing he can make out, anyway—and he turns around to look at their father for some direction.

“Sam,” Dad says, meeting his gaze head-on with an air of calm command. “Lines of salt in front of every window, every door.”

“I already did it,” Sam answers, a little confused despite his rising fear. Not only did he just do it, Dad just _helped_ him do it.

But Dad’s expression darkens into an uncompromising stare and he snaps, “Well, check it, okay?”

Part of Sam wants to protest the order, which assumes incompetence and unblinking obedience—both of which he thought they left behind over the past four months. But mostly he’s just scared shitless, remembering the way he felt in Alexandria—remembering the way the air smelled there, the way the demon’s eyes seemed to peer right down into his soul.

“Okay,” he agrees, and hurries out of the room.

He checks each room diligently, rechecking several sills when he panics and can’t recall looking at them. Finally, when he’s sure that everything is sealed up as tight as they can manage, he heads back to the main room. As he hurries back inside, the ‘all clear’ shrivels on his tongue.

Sam freezes in the doorway, the air in his lungs gone solid and uncompromising. His stomach lurches and keeps dropping, leaving him stuck in a sensation that feels like freefall. As his heartbeat echoes in his head, he reaches out a hand and grasps hold of the doorframe to his right, trying to ground himself. Trying to tear free of the nightmare he just walked into.

Nothing changes.

 

 _[Sam has walked in on what appears to be John molesting Dean. He immediately realizes that it is not his father in front of them. Sam tries to intervene, but the demon pins him to the wall while continuing to taunt Dean. Sam quickly realizes that Dean actually thinks it is their father doing this to him, and that the demon is doing its best to hurt all three Winchesters at once._

 _Finally, Sam becomes worried enough for Dean that his powers break him free and drive the demon back. With some breathing space, Dean realizes they’re dealing with the demon and not their father and tries to shoot the demon with the Colt. The demon throws him against another wall, though, knocking the Colt from his hand._

 _As in Devil’s Trap, it proceeds to taunt both boys, telling Sam to make the gun float to him and Dean that John’s going to taste the iron in his blood. When the demon seems to be showing too much interest in Dean, Sam distracts it by asking ‘Why’. The demon detours to speak with him for a few moments until Dean calls attention to himself again by snarking that he’d like the demon to get on with it already._

 _The demon turns back to Dean, and they have a brief exchange:_

 __“Funny,” the demon says. “But that’s all part of your M.O., isn’t it? Masks all that nasty pain, masks the truth.”

Dean either doesn’t see the danger he’s in or, more likely, he’s ignoring it as he curls his lips and shoots back, “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“You play the alpha dog, but the truth is you’re just a bitch in heat, ready to roll over and spread your legs at the first opportunity. You aren’t really happy unless someone’s pulling on your chain and making you beg, are you, Dean-o.” __

 _At this, Dean goes white and freaks out. Sam is confused until the demon touches Dean’s scar and reveals that it was possessing Hansen in the bathroom in Vegas ... and then Sam’s brain overloads and shuts down on him.]_


	2. Chapter 39

_[The YED proceeds to tell Sam “Happy Birthday”. When Sam protests that it isn’t his birthday, it replies that November 2nd is the only birthday Sam has that matters, although he can think of it as his baptism if he wants to. The demon refers to Dean as Sam’s birthday present and asks how old Sam was when he started to covet Dean._

 _The YED counts backwards through Sam’s life, starting with his first sexual encounter with Dean at twenty-two and eventually ending with his first real wet dream at eleven. It reveals that Sam has pretty much always been in love with Dean, although it twists events around so that Sam comes across as manipulative and covetous—taking special care to ruin Dean’s memories of teaching Sam pool by insinuating that Sam drew out the lessons because he was getting off on them._

 _Sam finally begs the demon to stop. The demon obeys, only to continue on and explain that it raped Dean as a special gift for Sam, because Dean never would have let Sam touch him if he hadn’t already been so badly broken. Sam is immediately wracked with guilt and tries to apologize to his brother, but the demon isn’t done yet and proceeds to tear open Dean’s shirt so it can show John the marriage tattoo on Dean’s hip. It even lets John have control long enough for John_ (who instantly understands what the mark means) _to voice his disgust to Sam._

 _Then it returns to molesting Dean while Sam looks on. Dean does his best to fight, but can’t move with the demon’s power holding him still, and Sam realizes that his brother was also fighting_ (ineffectively) _during the rape. His confused mind just translated his stillness into passivity._

 _The demon tries to get Dean interested in the proceedings, and when it fails it asks whether he needs something a little less gentle to get off. Before Dean can really process what the demon is taunting him about now, it begins to squeeze the blood from his chest, much as in the original episode. It then prepares to rape Dean again, this time with John’s body as Sam looks on._

 _Dean pleads with his father not to do this to him, and in a supreme act of willpower, John manages to snatch control away from the demon for a single, vital moment ...]_

 

Against the wall, Sam feels the demon’s power loosen its hold and strains forward in a desperate surge. That dark, painful place in his mind flexes again, and he drops to his feet as the demon’s power snaps.

Sam doesn’t let himself think about it. Doesn’t let himself hesitate. He dives for the table, grabbing the gun and tucking in his shoulder as he rolls onto his back and then comes up into a crouch, Colt leveled at their father. The demon is already back in control, and it takes a single step in Sam’s direction before catching sight of the gun and pulling up short.

Gun or not, the demon’s grin is triumphant. “You kill me, you kill Daddy,” it points out, and Sam can tell that it doesn’t expect him to do it. Despite what it just did to Dean—what it’s still going to do if Sam doesn’t stop this—it doesn’t expect him to pull the trigger.

“I know,” Sam agrees.

Dropping his aim, he pulls the trigger and puts a bullet in Dad’s thigh. He isn’t sure whether it’s going to be a fatal shot anyway, considering the weapon’s purpose, but it’s the best chance he can offer their father.

The demon looks shocked as hell for a moment. It stands there, looking from the gun to Dad’s leg, and then up at Sam’s face. Then, with a flicker of lightning across bloodstained denim, it topples to the floor. Behind it, Dean comes unglued from the wall and slides limply to one side.

Sam is moving before his brother’s body hits the floor.

He isn’t quite fast enough to catch Dean, but he’s there in the next second, hands fluttering over his brother’s blood-soaked chest. He wants to cover Dean up but doesn’t quite dare to try it—he doesn’t know what touching Dean below the waist will do to his brother right now.

“Dean,” he says instead, reining himself in and planting both hands on the floor where his brother can see them. “Dean, hey. Oh God, you—you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

The look Dean gives Sam is confused, like he isn’t sure exactly where he is or what’s going on. “Where’s Dad?” he rasps.

Sam glances over his shoulder—Dad’s still down, maybe breathing, maybe not—and then turns back to his brother. “He’s right here,” he says. “He’s right here, Dean.”

Dean gives a weary nod and lets his head thunk down on the floor. “Go check on him.”

“Dean,” Sam protests.

Dean doesn’t open his eyes, but his voice is uncompromising as he repeats, “Go check on him.”

Grudgingly, Sam goes. Less because Dean’s asking him and more because he wants to make sure the danger is over. He wants to be sure the demon’s gone, even if it took their father with it.

“Dad?” he calls, moving carefully toward their father with the gun out and pointed toward the floor. “Dad?”

Dad stirs suddenly, hauling in a breath and jerking his body. The Colt comes up in Sam’s hands automatically, and he takes a shaky step back.

“Sammy!” Their father’s voice is hoarse, but it’s unmistakably Dad speaking. Unmistakably Dad looking up at Sam with tears running down his cheeks. “It’s still alive,” Dad says. “It’s inside me, I can feel it. You shoot me.” His head comes up off the floor, as though he’d press his own skull against the end of the barrel if he were able to reach. “You shoot me! You shoot me in the heart, son!”

Sam knows he should obey, but for some reason he’s hesitating even before he catches Dean’s desperate, pleading whisper from behind him.

“Sam, don’t you do it. Don’t you fucking do it.”

Sam doesn’t know how Dean can beg for their father, how he’s in any condition to do anything but curl up into a ball and wait for the nightmare to go away. But when he looks back at his brother, Dean is actually struggling to sit up. He’s struggling to move toward the two people in the world whom he cares about more than he cares about himself.

“You’ve gotta hurry!” Dad shouts from Sam’s other side, jerking his attention back. “I can’t hold onto it much longer! You shoot me, son! Shoot me! Son, I’m begging you! You do it before it can hurt him again!”

The threat to Dean gets through, just as Dad must have known it would, and Sam brings the gun up, sights down the barrel at their father’s heaving chest. He’s about to pull the trigger when a trembling hand curls around his ankle.

“Sam, _no_.”

It’s Dean. Dean, who hauled himself over here, chest leaving a bloody streak on the floor, because he couldn’t figure out how to stand up with his pants stuck around his ankles. There’s a bloody smear on Dean’s cheek from the demon’s hand—more blood between his thighs, hopefully just transfer from his chest, but fuck, Sam doesn’t _know_ —but it’s Dean’s eyes that leave Sam cold and empty and hollow. Dean’s devastated, broken eyes.

If Sam shoots Dad now, he might as well shoot his brother as well, because Dean isn’t going to be able to come back from something like that.

Dad is still yelling at Sam to shoot, to end it here and now, but Sam is already lowering the gun. If the demon seizes control again, he’ll shoot to kill and damn Dean’s pleas, but he can’t put a bullet in their father like he’s a horse with a broken leg.

Besides, the Colt is too quick for the demon. Too quick by far.

When Dad throws his head back and opens his mouth to let the demon out, Sam watches it happen with dull, apathetic eyes. There’s a tiny spark of anger inside of him, a trickle of fear. Mostly, though, he’s numb. This ... the whole goddamn thing was just too much. He can’t process it right now.

“Goddamn it, Sammy,” Dad sobs when the last tendrils of the demon have seeped through the floor. “Goddamn it.” Pressing his hand over his eyes, he lies unmoving on the floor. He’s breathing, though, and it looks like Sam managed to avoid nicking the artery, so he feels safe enough turning his back on Dad and crouching down to check out Dean.

His brother is on his side now, trying to grab his jeans without bending his torso at all. It hurts to look at him, to see the tremor in his hands and hear his harsh breathing. Sam’s numbness doesn’t break, but it has an edge to it now: something bitter and desolate.

“How bad is it?” he asks, and he isn’t sure whether he means Dean’s chest or his ass or his mental state. When Dean just keeps making that pathetic, useless attempt to get his pants, Sam puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder to get his attention.

It’s a mistake.

Dean makes a choked, panicked noise and flails out at him before making an undignified scramble across the floor to huddle with his back to the wall. Sam can tell it’s hurting Dean to move like that, but Dean’s fear is riding him harder than the pain and he sits up when he gets there, pulling his knees up to his chest and staring at Sam with wide eyes. Dean’s staring at him like his eyes are yellow and not hazel, like Sam’s going to hurt him.

It only takes a couple of seconds for Dean to blink and come back to himself a little, but a couple of seconds is long enough. It’s too fucking long.

“Sammy?” Dean rasps, blinking in confusion. He looks down at himself as though he can’t remember how he got here, or what’s happening to him, and there’s a part of Sam that’s yelling at his brother to snap out of it, not to forget again, but there’s a larger part that knows now isn’t the time to jeopardize anything Dean’s mind is doing to keep him functional.

“Yeah, man. Can you—can—” He swallows, tucking the gun down the back of his pants and doing his best to look harmless. “Do you need help getting your pants up?”

Dean looks down again at that, sharply, and Sam can see the memories flickering around the edges of his brother’s eyes. Then Dean licks his lips and says, “Might. Chest hurts.”

“I know,” Sam says, even though he doesn’t know at all, doesn’t have the faintest clue what the demon might have done to his brother’s insides in order to make him bleed like that. No doubts about it this time—they’re going to a hospital.

Clearing his throat, Sam offers, “Try on your own, okay? If you need help, I’m right here.”

While Dean struggles obediently with the worn denim, Sam chances a glance back at Dad. The man’s hand has slipped from his eyes down onto the floor, and his face is slack in a way that tells Sam their father’s unconscious, which is probably a blessing. One unstable family member is all Sam can handle at a time right now.

When he looks back to his brother, Dean has managed to get his pants most of the way up his thighs, but he’s white with pain and dripping sweat. “Sammy,” he says tightly.

Sam’s careful to move forward slowly. Instead of pulling Dean’s pants up on his own, he tells Dean to get a grip on them and hauls his brother up by his armpits. In the new, standing position, Dean is able to get his underwear and his jeans up over his hips. When he starts zipping his pants again, though, and the denim constricts, he lets out a startled, hurt noise.

“Dean?” Sam says, trying to keep his voice even.

“It—Sammy, did I—” Dean shakes his head, lifting a shaky hand to press against his scar.

Sam bites his lip hard enough to taste the zing of copper, but doesn’t say anything and he gingerly takes his hands away, now that his brother’s standing on his own.

“Dad’s hurt,” Dean says when he lowers his hand again.

“Yeah.”

“You shot him.”

“Dean, we need to get you to a hospital.”

“I can’t believe you _shot_ him.”

The really sad thing is, Sam thinks Dean would still be saying that if he clearly remembered what just happened.

“We need to get Dad to a hospital,” Sam tries. It’s what he should have said in the first place, and it gets through Dean’s confusion and makes his brother stand a little taller.

“Can you lift him?” he asks. “I don’t think I can help. I fucked up my chest.”

Sam’s eyes are stinging as he turns away. “Yeah, man,” he says, wiping at his tears. “I’ll bring him.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s a measure of how messed up Dean feels that Sam comes out of the cabin with Dad slung over his shoulder to find the Impala’s engine on and Dean curled up in the back seat. One of Dean’s hands is lying limply on the seat next to him, the other is rubbing agitatedly at his temple.

“Didn’t want to get blood on the driver’s seat,” he says when Sam shoots him look while strapping Dad in. Sam’s vision blurs at his brother’s flimsy cover, and he accidentally elbows Dad’s chest while straightening. By the time he’s sliding into the driver’s seat, their father is coming around again.

“Dean.” It’s Dad’s first word, moaned as Sam shuts the driver’s side door after himself and fastens his seatbelt. “’S okay?”

“He’s fine,” Sam agrees, glancing in the rearview mirror to find his brother watching them both with pain-glazed, anxious eyes. “He’s in the backseat, Dad.”

“Hospital,” Dad says, and he’s clutching at his leg but Sam can tell it isn’t himself he’s requesting it for. When he glances over at their father as he drives away from the cabin, Sam can tell that the man remembers. He remembers everything.

Dad turns away from Sam’s glance, tilting his body toward the side window and scrunching his eyes. Sam’s pretty sure that his father is crying.

Sam can feel control slipping away from his hands, feels the panic descending, and clings harder to the numbness. The numbness lets him operate. It’s going to let him get Dad and Dean to safety.

 _Okay, think,_ he tells himself as he flicks on the high beams and speeds up. _You need a hospital. Where can you find a hospital?_

Bobby.

Steering with his left hand, Sam uses his right to fish his cell phone out of his front pocket and then holds it out toward Dad—he doesn’t want to have to take his eyes off the road long enough to find the man’s number. The last thing they need right now is a crash.

“Call Bobby,” he says. “We need directions to the nearest hospital.”

Dad takes the phone without really looking at him—red hands, red with Dean's blood—but Sam can feel the weight of his brother’s eyes from the backseat. He isn’t sure which response is more upsetting.

Dad has a subdued, mumbled conversation with Bobby over the phone and then hangs up and says, “Couple of miles up, take a right onto Dearbourne Lane. Hospital’s a forty mile straight shoot from there.”

Forty miles is further than Sam would like it to be, and once he locates the right turn off, he guns the engine until the car starts to shake around them, and then eases off a little. They drive in near-silence for almost twenty minutes; the only sounds breaking the quiet are Dad’s gasps of pain and one or two rasping breaths from Dean.

God, Sam prays his brother isn’t bleeding out internally.

Finally, after Sam nails a particularly rough bump, he can’t take it anymore. “Look, just hold on, alright?” he says. “The hospital’s only ten minutes away.”

“You should have killed it.” Dad’s voice, sullen and empty. “Christ, Sammy, you saw—” He chokes a little and has to clear his throat before finishing, “Why didn’t you just _shoot_ the bastard?”

Sam glances into the rearview mirror and finds Dean looking back at him. Dean still looks out of it, but there’s more awareness in his brother’s gaze than before. More shadows.

Sam thinks that what happened in the cabin is starting to come back.

“Dean needs us,” he says, not caring if his brother hears. He’s pretty sure Dean isn’t in any kind of condition to protest, anyway. “He needs both of us, and I wasn’t taking that away from him.” Clearing his throat, he continues in a more casual tone, “Look, we still have the Colt. We still have one bullet left. We just need to regroup, all right? I mean, we already found the dem—”

Something picks Sam up by the spine and yanks him sideways. The Impala screams around him. Glass peppers his face—no, not glass. Mirror shards.

 _Close your eyes, Dean,_ Sam thinks.

Silence.

 

[Back to Disturbia, Ch 40](http://archiveofourown.org/works/181007/chapters/266293)


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